Bru & Boegie ‘Get da MILK!’ post-launch!

Ah man. The launch of ‘Bru & Boegie: Episode 1 – Get da MILK!’ went far better than I could have hoped for! 🥲 I’m thrilled and relieved. The successful launch means a lot, particularly after what feels like a couple misses with the past few projects, though I’m grateful to those projects for the valuable learnings. I’ve created this as a post-launch celebration and analysis.

Stats

Since its launch on the 3rd April 2025 (about 2 weeks ago), and with literally $0 in paid marketing (I don’t even have social media channels anymore besides YouTube where I posted the trailer), the game’s stats are as follows:

• Shortly featured on itch.io after launch – this was what I was hoping for and am thrilled it happened! 🥳
• 18,500+ browser plays (!)
• 2,059 downloads
• 129 ratings, avg. 4.8 / 5 stars ⭐️
• Added to 839 collections
• Overwhelmingly positive comments
• $35 from 11 donations (I think that’s 35 more dollars from end users than any of the the last few projects that I’ve been involved with)
• Got 330+ followers on itch.io. I had like 4 followers for years.
• According to playthroughs, people seem to spend anywhere from about 20 – 40 mins getting through the game. That’s AMAZING. Given that it’s often a challenge to keep someone engaged with an animated short for even 1 minute, this is orders of magnitude more.

After Day 1 I think the browser play & downloads stats cruised past my optimistic pre-launch 1-month estimates. 😮

What worked

I developed a playable prototype within a week or two, shared that in the Makers Massive Discord and got some great initial feedback which I implemented, and decided to work up the game into a finished product which took me another 3 or 4 months. I created and worked through an extensive ‘to do’ list to get the game over the line and into what I considered a finished state. This is the second game I’ve made in Unity; prior to it I made a tiny point and click game to test the process to see if I could even make anything.

Commenters cite the humour, art, animation, dialogue, music, and ideology as aspects they liked, which pleases me. However, I think there are some other reasons that may not have been mentioned that helped the game be well received, which I’ll discuss below.

My broad strategy for the game’s production and release was a combination of basic common sense, and what I’ve learned from numerous gamedev and game-publishing audiobooks:

• Focus on FUN!
  • A game is entertainment – nobody needs to play it, people are willingly choosing to spend one of their most precious resources – time – on it, so best make sure it’s worth it!
• Make things easy to understand, and abundantly clear:
  • I don’t want the player to be unintentionally confused for even a moment. Having the player think about the solution to a puzzle is ok, but the puzzles themselves should be the challenge, and not poor design, confusing UI, crashes, or trying to figure out the game’s mechanics.
  • The objective of the game is literally mentioned in the game’s title ‘Get da MILK!‘ 😄
• NB! Respect the player’s time and attention by:
  • Focusing on releasing a complete / finished quality product. It’s clear when something’s not finished, and I didn’t want to release anything I knew was half-baked.
  • Ensure the player has an excellent first experience from start to finish. As an unknown dev, someone’s only likely to try the game once and judge it based on their first go.
  • No bugs; test thoroughly before launch. By launching without bugs, the player feels like their time and attention is honoured and respected.
• I spent good time on presentation; about 2 weeks of the 4.5 months on the itch.io page.
  • I wanted to make sure everything was ready for launch day so it was like ‘pressing the big red button’, which was very exciting. 🤩

A general approach to focusing on a) the player’s experience and b) on a quality end product, is a general time-tested practice. Without a product that works, all efforts to drive attention to it are in vain.

Seeing so many players play the game and report back positive results fills a void. These are mostly people who know nothing about me, nor Bru & Boegie. It feels like we’re all just happy to be here, it’s an invitation to spend time in Bru & Boegie’s world and be Bru, and people leave knowing me and the project a bit better.

I added a lot of Bru’s non sequiturs towards the end of development. Normally this is extraneous stuff that gets axed before animation production, but because of how a game is programmed – once the walking and talking animations are set up, it’s not a lot of extra work to stick in extra lines of dialogue – I added in cool stuff down the line. I’m pleased that people responded well to the general ideology of Bru & Boegie. ‘Independent and honest against-the-grain fringe thinking’ is a big part of Bru’s character.

Some examples of Bru’s dialogue from the game:

“Politicians are prostitutes.”

Bru and Chris Langan

and

“Did you know? There’s a reason there’s been so little technical inovation recently. Venture capitalists sometimes invest in a project to sit on its board and squash any innovation that could potentially be a threat to their existing business. They kill a project from within, Trojan Horse style. It’s why the World is sliding into a pit of mediocrity.”

Bru

and

“Our language is constructed in such a way that it makes it impossible to properly criticise the elite. It’s by design to keep us subservient.”

Again, Bru

There’s little chance I would have been able to get stuff like this into mainstream animation. Because so many companies and networks display zero backbone and are generally only concerned with unremarkably suckling at the teet of capitalism, the result is often ‘meh‘ and I think it’s currently why nobody in animation’s really saying anything of value, importance, or general interest. Similarly, if I had a games publisher for this game, my guess is I may have had to fight to keep the most interesting stuff in, and I’d rather reserve that energy and focus for making the game. Increasingly I see how important independence is – for Bru & Boegie, and in general.

Coverage

Video Playthroughs

I’m absolutely ✨THRILLED✨ to see around 25 [edit: and counting] video playthroughs posted on YouTube, many of which I discovered from commenters sharing their video links on the game’s page. I haven’t experienced this level of unprompted engagement from anything. Though I haven’t watched all the vids, it’s fantastic seeing players reactions when they’ve included their face in the frame. 😄

I’ve included a playlist of playthrough videos below. There’s a little ‘list’ button in the top-right of the video below, which expands the playlist once clicked:

Blogs and Sites

I asked Adventure Gamer before launch if they’d cover the game, which they kindly did. The rest of the sites and blogs the game has landed up on are unprompted/unsolicited. I tried posting these as links but WordPress kept trying to embed them:

https://adventuregamers.com/news/view/bru-boegie-milk-quest-madness

https://www.escapegames24.com/2025/04/bru-and-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk.html

https://dany58.eklablog.com/2025/04/mikdog-bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk.html

https://buckshotroulette.com/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk

https://kbhgames.com/game/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk

https://www.8bgames.com/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk/

https://www.flash512.com/cn/game/86382

https://kiz10.com/amp/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk-/

https://www.5mgsite.com/post/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk-download-game

https://game-game.com/265082/

https://www.miniplay.com/amp/game/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk

https://www.sniffmouse.com/info?game=bru-boegie-episode-1

https://en.sgames.org/194476/

https://warpdoor.com/2025/04/05/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk/

https://hu.sgames.org/194476/

https://www.gameworld.world/games/game9

https://www.snokido.com/game/bru-and-boegie-episode-1

https://www.minijuegos.com/juego/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk

https://www.games2live.com/bru-boegie-episode-1-get-da-milk/

Comments Gallery

The reviews and comments have been so awesome. ❤️🙏 The slideshow below features some of my favs:

Further Thoughts

Because I launched with zero marketing budget I was able to get an honest baseline for how the game stands on its own without skewed results from people who have been paid or tricked into engaging.

In terms of videogame vs. animation, given how much grief and gatekeeping was immediately apparent when I tried to make Bru & Boegie for an animation network, and how many headaches trying to work with commercial partners in animation has given me (like, ‘are we on the same team or are you just trying to make this difficult for me?’ 😅 People can find amazing ways to kneecap projects they’re funding), videogames seem to be a great medium for Bru & Boegie, with a more contemporary, cooler and receptive audience than animation. As a result, and what I’d hoped would happen – existing Bru & Boegie animations are receiving new attention.

It’s a videogame in the purest sense: it’s not trying to sell the player anything or get anything from them, it’s not created to appease investors / VC’s wishes, it’s not positioned as an investment opportunity – the heart of it is pure and un-cursed, and as such it found a great audience.

I made this game largely on my own and asked trusted friends and collaborators to contribute. They all did fantastic work.
I’m coming to learn that collaborating with or relying on others that I don’t purposefully choose to work with, can be hell. 😬

Links

If you still haven’t played ‘Bru & Boegie: Episode 1 – Get da MILK!’, now’s as good a time as any! 😁

Da Game: https://mikdog.itch.io/bru-boegie-get-da-milk
Game Trailer: https://youtu.be/LL-ZFfX2kOA
Original Soundtrack: https://youtu.be/E5Vp_m0ig9Q
Video Playthroughs: YouTube Playlist Link

Again, thank you 🙏❤️ I’d sometimes wait for the shoe to drop when I get excited about a project but am allowing myself to get excited for this. 🥳